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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Ok, a joke's a joke, and we've all had a good laugh, but I'm starting to get bored with this snow now. I'm so busy trying to save the young, the old and the diabetic from the ravages of a British winter that it's leaving me no time to blog. On Monday I rescued my frozen chip off the old block of ice from an igloo in St Leonards. On Tuesday I stayed late at the hospital to screen a patient who'd been delayed by a snow-induced power cut which had left his entire street without electricity for most of the day. And tonight, after another avalanche in the early hours of this morning, I've been back up to the snowy peaks of the Bristol Estate to deliver emergency rations to Lisa's Mum. I'm not sure she's been out since Christmas. She'd probably have cabin fever if she wasn't already a bit loopy.

I've had to leave Lisa and Amelie up there too. Lisa has an appointment tomorrow morning to have her brace tightened at the local torture chamber, and her Mum's supposed to be babysitting. Which would be fine if the lady hadn't been snowed in for a fortnight. So with little prospect of either Lisa or her Mum managing to get to each other unaided in the morning, I took it upon myself to deliver them a day early. So if we get any more snow tonight, they'll all be stuck there.

On top of all that, I've had a draining day on the phone, cancelling clinics across Sussex. I did speak to a man in his eighties who still had every intention of walking to his appointment this morning, but him aside, most people were only too pleased to wait until global warming's kicked in a bit more.

Having cancelled most of today's clinics, the decision was made to cancel the one I was due to take in Crowborough tomorrow. People from there kept phoning up like prophets of doom, telling us how bad the conditions are and trying to warn us off. So I started to call the patients on my list to tell them I wouldn't be coming. I got through to the wife of a man I was due to see first thing in the morning, so I asked if I could speak to him in person. She said "I'm afraid not, he's in Wales at the moment".

I was tempted to say "What's his name - Jonah?", but I didn't. I chose instead to say "Oh, so he's not coming to the appointment then?". She replied "Yes he is, he's driving back tonight".

You've got to admire commitment like that. The country's in the grip of snow, and he's driving all the way from Wales to Crowborough just to see me for a retinal screening appointment. He's not going to be happy when he gets there and finds I've cancelled it.